


Need a Moment to Come Down

by erinn_bedford



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Pls and thx, Tumblr Prompts, dani eats a lollipop, don't ask me about the where the idea of kids came from i don't know the answer, malcolm apologizes, post 1X12
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:15:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23086858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erinn_bedford/pseuds/erinn_bedford
Summary: “Would you have done it?” she asks, her voice quiet. The lollipop falls from his fingers and clatters to the table.He doesn’t know.Or, Malcolm talks to Dani after the incident. Post 1x12.
Relationships: Malcolm Bright/Dani Powell
Comments: 15
Kudos: 111





	Need a Moment to Come Down

**Author's Note:**

> Shout out to the tumblr anon who made my day by saying i was a good writer, you have my heart. Post 1x12

Malcolm collapses into the chair across from Dani and she doesn’t even flinch. Maybe she’s just gotten used to him now, but she’s not even looking at him. 

Maybe she’s just pissed.

Which he understands. He didn’t need Gil to tell him that he freaked her out, but Gil did tell him, which meant that he has scared her enough that probably the entire team knew. So he was here, on what was supposed to be a mandated leave, sitting across from her, hoping that maybe, he could make this right.

“Dani,” he says, after she hasn’t looked up at him long enough to know that she is most definitely ignoring him.

Her hand clenches, but she lifts her head to meet him eyes, flipping her hair back out of her face.

“What do you want Bright, I’m busy.” There’s an edge to her voice, and she is so, so pissed at him he can feel it in the way she looks at him.

She has every right to be. She has done nothing but try to help him since almost the first day she met him, dealt with his moods and his outbursts, checked in on him, and been just a really good friend. Which is something he doesn’t ever remember having.

And he fucked it up. Majorly. Enormously. Devastatingly. 

Because he can’t figure out his own mind, and it’s driving him to almost hurting himself.

“I’m sorry.” 

Dani blinks. Her hand unclenches.

“For what?”

Malcom grabs the lollipop he left in her pen cup that morning so he has something to do with his hands.

“You tried to stop me. And I completely ignored you. And I hurt you.” He can’t bring himself to look at her. They are friends. Fragile friends, but still friends, and he’s not good at the whole having friends thing. 

He never really had anyone that he hurt accidentally who’s opinion he cared about. Except for Gil, but surrogate dad’s don’t really count as friends.

Dani laughs, and shakes her head. “I think that is the first time I’ve ever heard you apologize.”

“I’m trying to be a better person,” he says, smiling, and Dani’s eyes find his, but there’s a sadness in the them he can’t pin down.

“Would you have done it?” she asks, her voice quiet.

The lollipop falls from his fingers and clatters to the table. 

He doesn’t know. 

That’s one of the worst parts of this whole thing. He doesn’t know if he would have done it or not. He had the rods in his hands, the dial turned all the way up.

He just wanted peace. And it might have worked. Or he might have killed himself. 

“I don’t know,” he says, because he’s trying to be better at this friend thing, and he’s pretty sure a major part of it is being honest. “I’d like to think I wouldn’t.” He takes a deep breath, and grabs the lollipop again, anything to stop his hands from trembling. “You helped. If you hadn’t been trying to stop me, I think I would have moved faster.” 

Dani props her head on her hands, lips pursed. “Don’t do it again, okay.” Her teeth worry over her lip and then she plucks the lollipop from his hands. “I don’t want to have to start making new friends again.” She smiles at him, just slightly, but it works. She’s keeping it light, but the words mean more to him then he thinks she realizes. “Especially one’s whose mothers think I’m great.” 

“Agh,” Malcolm drops his head to the desk, and Dani’s really laughing at him this time, and it’s one of the best sounds he’s ever heard. “She’s a menace, I’m sorry. You have to be careful or she’ll start dropping hints that she would like to be a grandmother soon.”

The second the words drop from his mouth, he wants to disappear into the floor. The next second, his mind creates tiny little Dani’s with blue eyes and curly hair and he wants to discover time travel and rewind to a point in time when he didn’t put his foot in his mouth.

“Shit, I’m sorry.” He forces himself to look at her. The lollipop is tucked in her cheek, and there’s the slightly bit of coloring sneaking across her skin, and for some incredible reason, it makes his heart skip.

“I don’t think your mom would turn to me for help to get you laid,” Dani says, recovering way faster than him.

She diffuses the entire situation in sentence, and he still hates himself, but she knows how to help him out. 

“I wouldn’t put anything past her.”

Dani rolls her eyes and moves the lollipop to the other side of her mouth without her hands, and Malcolm can feel his heart pulling itself toward her, but he does just about everything he can do to ignore it.

“I’ll make sure to be extra vigilant for any grandchildren talk,” Dani teases, titling her head so her curls tumble down her neck, and he has to try his best not to stare. 

“Just tell her she’s too young to be a grandmother. The best way to appease my mother is through flattery.” 

He’s trying. He’s trying so hard to pull the thought of Dani with kids that may or may not also look like him out of his mind. 

He doesn’t even want children. 

But the picture is clear in head, a little family unit, armed with lollipops and Dani’s smirk and his eyes, and he could pull her close, slip his arm around her waist, spin her around and kiss he-

“Bright?” Dani’s voice pulls him out of head and his cheeks are burning, and she’s watching him like she can read his mind.

Which is mortifying and wonderful all at the same time.

“Yeah, sorry.” He shakes himself out of daydream and tries to find some sense of steady.

He’s never really thought of the future in a concrete way. Malcom spends so much of his time in the past, just trying to make it through each present day that he usually doesn’t have a moment to think about the future.

He’s never, ever really, thought about a future that would include someone else. 

“I said thanks for the advice.” She pulls the lollipop from her mouth, and her lips are stained green, and he has no idea where all of this is coming from, but he suddenly wants to know if she’ll taste like green apples if he kisses her.

Which is definitely his cue to leave. 

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Dani asks. She’s looking at him like she’s a puzzle she needs to solve, and his heart is slamming against his chest, because it wants to be solved by her. 

But he can’t. He can’t do anything that would mess up them, mess up their friendship. It’s the first he’s had in a while that he actively wants to preserve, to protect, to ensure. 

He’s slowly becoming friends with everyone else, but Dani was first. She was first, and she was still here, still wanting to be his friend, and the thought of losing her, well, he doesn’t even want to think about.

“Of course. You don’t have to worry about me,” he says, pushing himself up form her desk. Her eyes follow him, questions forming in her brows, but she just pops the lollipop back in her mouth.

“I do though.” She folds the wrapper into a perfect square, and then passes it to him. “Don’t make me regret it.”

He tucks the square into his pocket and wonders how weird it would be if he pinned it to his fridge. “Regret what?”

She’s not looking at him anymore, already back to working on whatever it was he distracted her from in the first place, but he can see the smile in the lines of her cheek. 

“Wanting to keep you around.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I know this is like several episodes behind the episode tag, but if i started doing post ep fics on time, you would probably start to worry about me. We're almost through the hiatus buds, we can do this!
> 
> Title from Lily Amon Clouds, Your Hands Are Like Home.


End file.
